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AI engineer roles pay over $100K and grew 255%. How to start the switch from your current job.
Business Insider verified his raise. It took 4 years, a part-time degree and a talent program. Here’s where you start this month.
Benjamin Leong spent his days as a traditional Chinese medicine physician in Singapore. Now he’s an AI engineer at a health tech startup, earning about 30% more in base pay than he did as a junior physician.
Business Insider checked his employment and salary. It also reported the part most “I switched careers” stories skip: it took him about four years, from a Python course in 2020 to the AI job in 2024.
I’m working my way into AI engineering right now, coming out of the Marine Corps, so I read his story closely. The part that matters most for you isn’t the raise. It’s why he got hired.
The fastest-growing AI job, in plain words
An AI engineer builds tools and products on top of AI models. Think of a model like ChatGPT or Claude as an engine. The AI engineer builds the car around it: the data going in, the app people use, the checks that catch bad answers.
That’s different from a machine learning engineer, who mostly trains and tunes the models themselves. AI engineers are closer to builders. Most use…
